Settlers keep faith to build for uncertain future

On a barren, rocky hilltop, a group of Jews are sheltered inside temporary buildings, studying the word of God.

Two watchtowers guard the buildings, one draped with an Israeli flag. Concrete barriers have been erected around this Jewish seminary in the West Bank, on the edge of Efrat.

Only 10 minutes' drive from Jerusalem, Efrat is home to more than 6000 and the settlement is growing. One day, it may become a city and the seminary or yeshiva, a permanent institution.

This week as the Israeli army removed 11 unauthorised Jewish outposts in the West Bank, the school continued its work undisturbed and bulldozers moved earth for the building of new homes in Efrat.

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Nathaniel Wolfish, 28, one of the teachers at the Efrat seminary, said the settler movement was happy to sacrifice token outposts for the sake of preserving the larger communities. "It's a game," he said.

"Because the settlers feel if they don't play the game, they'll evacuate them from the main settlements."

Mr Wolfish said that in the case of the seminary, the leaders of Efrat had encouraged the establishment of the school in order to prevent Palestinians from pressing claims over the site. "This was part of Efrat but no one was here," he said during an interview inside the administration building. "Efrat wanted somebody to come over and settle here, so the Arabs won't try to settle here."

He said the fear was that Palestinians would either attempt to farm or graze the area and then assert rights to the land in a court action.

The residents of Efrat needed only look out their windows to confirm such suspicions.

In a lush valley just below the school, Palestinian farmers are cultivating their orchards and local Arab women can be seen carrying produce on their heads.

They are among the more than two million Palestinians residing in the West Bank, one of the territories seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

The official position of the Palestinian Authority is that the whole of the West Bank belongs to the Palestinian people, and that the Israeli settlers, who number about 200,000, must go.

But Mr Wolfish, who acknowledged that one day the sides had to reach a political compromise, said that evacuation was not an option.

"This is our Promised Land. Judea and Samaria (the biblical names for the West Bank) are part of the places where our ancestors used to live".

Inside Efrat itself, entrepreneurs express the same faith that they have a right to live in the territory.

Among them is Mordechai Goodman, a businessman originally from Houston, Texas, who moved here from New York. In Efrat, he runs a well-patronised pizzeria, with the support of some of his nine children.

"This is conquered land, the same as Houston, where I am from," he said. "Houston was conquered from Mexico and nobody from Mexico ever asked us to leave Houston and let the Mexicans move back because there was a war and the land was conquered. As most lands are in most countries, wherever you live. So we live in Israel."